


New Post

by litra



Category: Fandom - Fandom, Meta - Fandom
Genre: Gen, Horror, Meta, Podfic Welcome, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:13:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24585130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/litra/pseuds/litra
Summary: There's something on LJ. Something destroying the posts. We don't know how it started, but I hope I see the end.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 17
Collections: remixapod 2020





	New Post

**Author's Note:**

  * For [semperfiona](https://archiveofourown.org/users/semperfiona/gifts).
  * Inspired by [[Podfic] The Last Post](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20937188) by [semperfiona_podfic (semperfiona)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/semperfiona/pseuds/semperfiona_podfic). 



I'm sorry,

I don't know what else to say. I wish I had more information for you. I wish all of this was just a joke. I've read the theories, and any of them would be better than what I've seen. 

I don't know how many people will read this. I don't know how many people are still around to read this. Maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe I'm just yelling into the void, but isn't that what we all do? Isn't that how everything started, the chat rooms and the message boards that all this grew out of?

I have to try. 

So here's what I know, and maybe someone will find it and maybe someone will be helped. I have to believe that.

I hadn't been working for LJ long when it started. Technically I'd been hired to quality check official posts in different languages. In reality I spent as much time doing odd jobs around the office and sending emails as translating. Maybe that was why I got pulled in when everything went crazy. I was a known face. Everyone's gopher.

It was just under two months after I'd started working when the big ITAH virus thing started. I heard people complain about the number of tickets at lunch, how a bunch of posts had been changed to those four words.

_Is There Anyone Here?_

The customer service people were getting the worst of it. They always did. They could only repeat over and over that any changes made to comments or posts were the responsibility of the poster. Soon enough the devs were pulled in. 

My cube was across the hall from the server room. They kept the door open most of the day to keep things cooler. I could sometimes hear them talking over the sounds of the fans. They had as many theories as anyone, and just like the rest of us, they had no answers. 

Memos started going out. They reminded us to present a united front. They reminded us not to talk to anyone and direct all questions to the legal or communications departments. They said they were working on the problem. I was called on to translate several official statements into French and German. Each statement was emptier than the last. Telling concerned parties that the problem was being addressed with all haste. That it was a top priority and we valued every member of the LJ community. 

Some of the devs built test accounts logging every post and comment trying to track whatever it was back to the source. Others worked on Isolating accounts, trying to figure out what the common denominator was. They had a white board. I could see it from the hall. Every morning they'd check how many accounts had been hit. How many posts and comments were just those four words.

_Is There Anyone Here?_

After a while they stopped counting up. The next day a new number appeared, the number of accounts that hadn't been infected yet. I never really paid attention to the number of users we had, but that number seemed far too small, and it wasn't getting any bigger. 

Then there was i_have_no_voice. I don't think they were the first, but they were the first person I heard of. The first in my fandom circles. Their account was gone. All their archived posts had been deleted. All their account info was gone. just those four words.

_Is There Anyone Here?_

A friend pointed it out. They knew where I worked and wanted to know if we'd deleted the account for some terms violation. That's how I first found out. I knew it wasn't something I was supposed to do, but I checked into it. I couldn't find anything with my access. it looked like someone had set up a brand new account. Like it was some kind of joke. 

I knew it was possible to wipe an account. I'd had to wipe my account before I was hired. There was no way I was letting my bosses know I was in fandom. Even if I didn't write much, just lurked and followed people. In retrospect it was pretty easy to turn my account into a sock puppet. Maybe that's why I lasted this long...

I brought in doughnuts and bribed the devs to check the logs for i_have_no_voice. I knew their account was at least a year old, or at least that's how long I'd been following it. By that point they were too interested in the problem to bother getting me in trouble. The logs were empty. The creation date must have been accurate because it was years old, but everything else was either gone, scrap data or those same four words.

_Is There Anyone Here?_

The devs seemed to think it was something new, something wrong. They weren't the only ones. They started talking about back doors and intelligent sabotage. 

The next day Iris Johnson, from two cubicles down, didn't come into work. 

I didn't connect what what was happening at the time. I just knew that our mutual boss was pissed she hadn't given any warning or called in about needing a sick day. I only really remember it because that was also they day things were rescheduled. The devs had a plan to back up the servers, and completely purge the systems. It would require bringing everything down overnight and loading in a completely different operating system. The higher ups wanted it done yesterday so anyone who had even a scrap of coding knowledge was pulled in. I knew the basics of HTML and CSS and I'd taken a class in college so apparently I qualified.

I stayed at work until 10:30 that night, and for the rest of the week. They had me run the same eight commands over and over, loading data onto remote drives. Checking everything four the ITAH code. By that point it felt like I was deleting more than I transferred. 

I told myself it would be worth it. I told myself it would solve the problem. I told myself that in a year or two I'd look back and be able to tell stories about the great LJ transfer or whatever the web decided to call it. I laughed thinking about how I'd be one of the fandom olds, telling young fans that they didn't know how good they had it. 

I'd never worked hours like that. I dropped into bed and barely moved all weekend when things were done. I nearly called out on Monday but curiosity got the better of me. I hadn't checked LJ all weekend. It felt wrong. Kind of like opening your presents before your birthday and kind of like peaking at the answer to a test. I knew the devs had worked through Saturday, doing all the final checks that the rest of us couldn't help with. 

I don't know what I expected when I went into the office. I figured everyone would know if it worked right away. But the door to the dev room was locked. A bunch of the cubes were empty too. At that point I figured they had just taken a break. the dev team certainly deserved it. But no one seemed to know if it had worked or not, or even if they'd finished. 

I got an email that day. A friend was dropping LJ. They said people were disappearing, really disappearing. As in, no one could contact them after their accounts were infected. She said half of her posts had already changed and she wasn't taking the chance. She wasn't going to have all that was left of her be one stupid sentence.

_Is There Anyone Here?_

I didn't blame her. I might not have been able to see the numbers on the dev's whiteboard, but I was pretty sure whatever they'd tried hadn't worked. 

The dev's didn't come in the next day, or the one following. By the end of the week half the office was empty. The rest of us tried to cover for them. Pretend everything was normal while whispering behind our hands. I heard conversations in the lunch room about people jumping ship. As if they'd just quit, rather than vanished. As if there weren't still pictures on their desks and plants that were slowly wilting. I had other theories.

See, I've always loved horror. I lurked in those dark corners of fandom that no one admits to in polite company. The areas where gore and violence are a given and tagging for major character death and non-con go hand in hand. I was genre savvy enough to see when there was something hiding in the dark.

I didn't know what it is. I still don't. Some virus that came to life, a curse, a creature from outside our universe. I figure at this point it doesn't matter.

See, I know I can't escape it. That friend I mentioned, She's gone. Stopped answering my emails and her phone is dead, even though she tried to leave. 

I still have a pass into the building. The LJ office is empty these days. They gave me access to this admin account when I helped back things up. As soon as I post this I'm going to try to break into the dev room. I'm going to unplug everything I can get my hands on and smash everything else. I know it won't bring everything down. There are backups in other locations. But maybe it'll slow it down. Maybe it'll cripple it enough that it won't jump to some other site. Maybe it will be enough. 

So I'm sorry. If you're reading this, get out while you can. I'm sorry. We never meant for any of this to happen. 

Wish me luck. 

_Is There Anyone Here?_

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] New Post](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26804278) by [Ravin_Pods (Ravin)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ravin/pseuds/Ravin_Pods)




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